My 24-year-old son was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes about 2 years ago. Later we found out that another student on his college basketball team was diagnosed with diabetes the same week, with exactly the same symptoms. Do you think this is merely coincidence, or could there be a connection? Is diabetes considered
infectious?

Answer:

Rather a coincidence I admit; but I very much doubt if it was all due to a single common environmental factor given the fact that nowadays we know that Type 1 diabetes has a long prodromic phase, which is clinically silent, and which is different in length from person to person, and there are several
environmental factors possibly thought to be influential or causal in causing
the disease.

We don't know either if any single infectious agent (e.g., viruses such as rubella or Coxsackie B4) triggers the starting or perhaps precipitate the process of insulin cell
autoimmune
destruction that eventually results in clinical diabetes. It is more probably that in an individual patient, several factors acting upon genetic usceptibility over time may lead to diabetes.

Last Updated: Tuesday April 06, 2010 15:08:56
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